


Wrong floor

by justned



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Fluff, Happy Ending, Human Doctor (Doctor Who), M/M, Romantic Comedy, and a lot of biscuits and coffee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:47:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26616958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justned/pseuds/justned
Summary: A journalist named the Doctor investigates a mysterious stranger he met in a lift. As the coffee fueled investigation progresses, mysteries surrounding the stranger in a purple coat only multiply.
Relationships: Eleventh Doctor/The Master (Dhawan)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 16





	Wrong floor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [willtravers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/willtravers/gifts).



> I've written this fic for my friend and her very specific request: the story must include a journalist, a time traveler, a lift and coffee and it must be a Doctor/Master AU story with a happy ending. So here it is. Get well soon!
> 
> I feel I should also add some trigger warnings: the word "larvae" gets a mention, so do global pandemic and a possibility of eating a person. But I promise you, it's a fluffiest of fluffs with a bit of silly adventure and nobody dies. Well, almost.

He was very pleased with himself. Why shouldn’t he be? He actually met his deadline, which was, well, a rather rare occurrence. He managed to finish this week’s column on a very important issue of establishing a good relationship with your neighbours’ pets and local strays (crucial for a happy existence anywhere on this planet) in time and was heading to his favourite coffee shop to have a celebratory cup of triple shot caramel cappuccino. Or even maybe try that AeroPress or Chemex or whatever its fancy name is thingy because today he was feeling quite adventurous. He smiled at his slightly distorted reflection in the silvery lift door, re-adjusted his bow tie and checked his hair while pressing the button. A purple-ish light above the lift doors lit up, followed by a loud ping. The doors slid open, he stepped in, pressed another button and started humming to himself, looking forward to solving his readers’ problems next week: maybe someone will write in asking to help choose a gift for the crow they forged a friendship with or inquire how to tame a microwave or a smartphone seemingly possessed by a mischievous spirit of their Nan. He took pride in always finding a way out of the most tangled of little or not so little puzzles. He didn’t choose the Doctor as his _nom de plume_ for nothing.

“Listen, I’m sorry, okay?” an annoyed voice broke the silence and the Doctor stopped humming.

“I didn’t know it was _that_ important to you,” the voice, a man’s voice, coming from behind the Doctor, continued. “I don’t understand why because, frankly, it’s one of the most boring games invented by humanity. What’s so interesting about a bunch of people kicking a ball around for an hour and a half?”

Oh dear. A lovers’ tiff. The Doctor couldn’t help but feel for the other person involved, because he too loved to kick a ball for an hour and a half with his friends. It brought him joy. Being stuck with a quarreling couple, on the other hand, made him feel awkward. The lift was taking forever and it felt as if the walls were closing in. It didn’t help that this little space was filled with the overpowering smell of flowers and biscuits with an underlying note of... was it lobster? The Doctor thought to himself that he definitely should put this incident and all those details into another one of his columns, the relationships one, the one he wrote under the name of Miss Emma Brioche which also chronicled his mostly uneventful love life. He sighed.

The rustling sound followed and the man continued, mouth clearly full, “It doesn’t even blow up when they score!”

The Doctor absolutely had to turn around to look at the person saying this. He froze. In the corner right behind him a black haired man was looking up at him, brushing away biscuit crumbs from his purple coat and holding out a half eaten packet of Jammie Dodgers. No one else was there, it was just them. With a loud ping the doors finally opened.

“Shit. Wrong floor!” the man exclaimed looking behind the Doctor. He pushed the biscuits into the Doctor’s hands and hurried out of the lift. The Doctor turned around only to see the man grab the Doctor, _the other_ Doctor, by the hand and quickly walk away. The Doctor froze once again, hypnotized by the sight of another him as the doors closed in front of his face.

~*~

“I think I’m experiencing a spacetime phenomenon,” the Doctor said cautiously, his heart beating fast. He was scared and excited and intrigued and could barely contain himself. The caffeine from that triple shot caramel cappuccino and the sugar from the half packet of Jammie Dodgers he ate on his way here were finally getting to him.

The man from the lift looked up from the other side of a perfume stand that was between them. “Is that a compliment?” he said, spraying his wrist from a little bottle with the picture of a lobster on it, scrunching his nose and moving on to another one of the myriad of uniform perfume bottles in front of him. The Doctor has noticed the man from the lift through the shop window on his way back to the office and he just had to get some answers. But he wasn’t getting any. If anything, he had way more questions now. He spent last thirty minutes following the mysterious stranger around the shop as he tried on every pair of specs and tasted, yes, tasted, various nail polishes before declaring that turquoise was “a magnificent colour, let down only by its disappointingly bland taste.” He didn’t seem to mind the Doctor’s presence but wasn’t very keen on answering his questions. Now they‘ve finally stopped in the perfume department, the Doctor hoped to get to the bottom of their unexplained previous encounter.

“Look, it’s the wrapper from those Jammie Dodgers you gave me and...” the Doctor waved the empty biscuits packet he pulled out of his pocket.

“Jammie what?” the man asked, not even looking at the Doctor, focused on reading the label on another perfume bottle.

“Jammie Dodgers, the biscuits. My favourite ones, as a matter of fact. But anyway. The point is, the best before date is October 1989!”

“So what?” the man said before looking up and spraying the Doctor in the face with perfume. “Orange blossom. What do you think?”

“Very nice. Fresh. Flowery,” the Doctor had to blink a couple of times, while the man from the lift sprayed himself and then dismissively shrugged, picking up yet another bottle. “I mean, it’s September 2011 now, so those biscuits were either massively out of date or...”

The man scratched his stubble and opened his mouth to say something but he was interrupted by a woman with a “beauty crew” badge on her shirt. “Sir, do you know you can get those in waterproof?” she asked, pointing to the bunch of eyeliner pencils he was holding in one of his hands.

“No, thank you,” he said coldly, clutching the pencils and clasping them to his chest.

“Stocking up,” he explained almost defensively as the woman left. “They will discontinue them next year.”

The Doctor has started to suspect that he was right from the very beginning and he was, in fact, experiencing or witnessing a spacetime phenomenon. There was only one way to find out for sure.

“Are you from the future?” he asked the man from the lift.

But in the exact same moment the man let out a triumphant scream, so the Doctor’s words drowned out. “Ginger cookies! So that’s why they’re called ‘pick-me-ups’!” he exclaimed gleefully and proceeded to spray half a bottle of perfume on himself.

The Doctor looked on as various objects, such as eyeliner pencils, plasters of all colours, little packets of candied ginger, perfume bottles, a can of hairspray and a pair of spectacles disappeared down the seemingly bottomless pockets of the man’s coat without a trace. He’s paid for his shopping and he was going to leave not having answered any of the Doctor’s questions. Standing in the middle of the shop now alone, the Doctor seemed a little bit lost. Just as he was walking out the door, the man turned around and said: “You know what? I think _you_ are from the future.”

The overwhelming smell of ginger biscuits followed the Doctor everywhere till the end of the day.

~*~

“Black hair, stubble or a beard, purple coat, funny little trousers? The tweedy type, bit like you? Yeah, haven’t seen him since the 80s. There was the usual thing with plates and mugs and little things like, I don’t know, biscuits going missing from the kitchenette. The sort of thing those ghosts or poltergeists or whatever they call them usually do. To be honest, I never gave it much thought. We were busy bringing down the government, you know, and all this supernatural stuff was never my thing,” said Rob the Cartoonist and went back to drawing yet another smug fat animal in a top hat.

The Doctor had to put down that piece of chocolate he was putting into his mouth. All this week he investigated the mysterious stranger, a possible time traveler. Of course he did. He had to. He started with asking around the office but hasn’t had any luck. All he was getting - and there was nothing new there - were either strange or pity looks. Not until he decided to take a break and have a cup of tea with one of the only two persons here who actually took any interest in what he had to say.

A ghost! That thought haven’t even crossed the Doctor’s mind. Although the Doctor being the Doctor never dismissed anything. But do ghosts travel in time? Do they shop and have money to pay for their shopping? Do they eat biscuits?

“Did he have a Northern accent?” the Doctor asked Rob the Cartoonist, holding his breath because his mysterious man from the lift definitely had one.

“You know, I’ve never in my life talked with a ghost. I should add this to my bucket list!” Rob sipped from his mug and chuckled, really concentrated on painting pink a pig’s trotter holding a champagne glass.

The Doctor went to check once again the place of the alleged haunting: the lift. There was nothing unusual about it. It was grey and metallic and not especially cold to the touch. The doors would open with a loud ping and above the doors a red light would flash up. Wait, wasn’t it kind of purple the last time? In the exact same moment as this thought occurred to the Doctor, a purple light went up above the lift and with a loud ping the doors slid open. The Doctor jumped back.

“Listen, listen, listen. How was I to know that the big red button would make your ship self destroy in forty seconds if I pressed it?” the man in the purple coat said chokingly. He was held right up to the lift’s ceiling by his neck by a creature the Doctor could only describe as a giant badger in a spacesuit with flashing blue lights all over it.

“I mean, it’s not like I planned to get rid of you from the very beginning or anything,” he continued, kicking up his legs and trying to unlock the creature’s claws with both his hands.

“Oh my God, it’s enormous!” the Doctor whispered paralyzed by this sight.

The creature turned its head to the Doctor and growled loudly in his face, baring its teeth and squeezing the man’s neck even more tightly.

“You’ve upset her now! You know how much time and money she’s spent on that diet?” the man in the purple coat gasped out. “Well, don’t just stand there! Do something!”

The Doctor jumped up a little and spun around, looking for the clues for what to do next. The hallway was deserted, there were no one and nothing there. Except for a scraggy pot plant right behind the Doctor.

“By the power invested in me by The Federation of Pot Plants and Indoor Vegetation I order you to stop!” the Doctor shouted, whipping out the half eaten chocolate bar he just felt in his pocket and holding it up to the creature. “Look, here’s my Pot Plants and All Other Indoor Vegetation including Seaweed and Aquarium Algae guardian ID. You’re breaking the subclause of article 11: no aggression should be shown in front of any houseplant as it may cause them considerable distress.”

Still holding the man tightly with its claws, the creature stretched its neck to sniff around the chocolate bar.

“Yes, my personal ID and security information is coded in the aroma,” the Doctor improvised, trying to think up what to do next.

Just as the Doctor was saying this, the man in the purple coat threw his weight at the creature as it eased the grip on his neck and pressed the big flashing button on the creature’s chest with both his hands. With a loud popping sound the creature disappeared in a flash of blue light and the man fell to the ground. He sat up, laughed and winked at the Doctor.

The Doctor smiled back. “Who would’ve thought, eh?” he said, pointing at his lucky chocolate bar with an elegant lady in tight Victorian dress riding a penny farthing printed on the wrapper.

“I’m never wearing that again,” said the man in the purple coat, nodding at the picture and trying to catch his breath, “Played absolute havoc with both my stomachs.”

The lift doors closed before the Doctor could say anything.

~*~

The Doctor was standing at the counter, head resting on his fists, staring absently at a large hourglass-shaped flask as a barista slowly poured hot water through the brown paper filter. As drops of coffee fell down, the Doctor thought to himself that his investigation didn’t really lead him anywhere. For the past two weeks he was gathering information, old press cuttings and eyewitnesses’ reports on UFOs sightings in this area of the city. There was nothing there of note, really, not in the 80s and not recently. Which in itself was a little bit odd because wherever you go, there’s usually at least one person who won’t stop talking about a UFO they’ve definitely seen with their own eyes. The mysterious stranger, whom the Doctor now believed to be an alien, didn’t show up in these two weeks either. The Doctor felt disappointed: here was a puzzle he couldn’t solve.

“The Doctor!” a familiar voice scoffed behind the Doctor’s back, “Is this the best you could come up with?”

The Doctor turned around. The man in the purple coat was sitting at the table behind him, holding a newspaper. He put it down right next to four empty coffee cups, stood up and walked up to the Doctor.

“I like the sound of Miss Emma Brioche much more. I’ve read all of her columns. Shame it didn’t work out with what’s-his-name. And with what’s-her-name,” he said with a certain amount of sympathy.

“It’s you,” the Doctor whispered under his breath, unable to believe his luck.

“Is there any point in _that_?” the man asked, pointing at the glass flask where coffee was still brewing.

“Actually, with this method of brewing you can get a lighter body and remove bitter notes from the taste. It highlights gentler notes and...” the barista stopped talking under the death stare of the man.

“You should be glad I promised myself not to kill anyone around here, there’s obviously too much going on already and I’m not in the mood. Be grateful. Anyway...” he said, pressing a small shiny disc into the Doctor’s hand. The next moment he and the Doctor were standing in the familiar lift.

“Anyway,” the man continued, content with the Doctor’s amazed look. “The best coffee around here is actually in your office. Did you know that?”

“What?” this claim shocked the Doctor even more than the sudden unexplained change of their location, “Have you tried it? It’s incredibly sour and...”

The doors slid open with a loud ping. The man stepped out of the lift. “Come on, I’ll show you the way,” he said to the Doctor, smiling and holding out his hand.

The Doctor took his hand and followed him into the hallway. It certainly was the hallway leading to the Doctor’s newspaper office but there was something off. For a start, walls were a darker shade of cream and that scraggy plant near the lift actually looked quite healthy. The smell was completely different too: it smelled not of cheap floor clearing liquid but of cigarettes. You could hear phones ringing somewhere not far away and this too was unusual. As they got nearer the office, the smell intensified and the ringing got louder. When the man pushed the glass door and they both stepped into the office, the Doctor finally knew what was happening. He never saw this place so busy and it was a bit of a shock for all of his senses. People smoked at their desks, typed and talked loudly on the telephones, which were ringing nonstop, the radio played I Want It All by Queen in the background and nobody, absolutely nobody, seemed to notice both the Doctor and the man in the purple coat.

“I believe it tastes much better in 1989 than in 2011,” he said, rummaging through cupboards in the office kitchen and nodding at the coffee maker. “Help yourself, dear.”

The Doctor felt it would be impolite not to oblige and poured himself a mug of coffee from the jug. Of course, it felt a little bit odd: he’s just traveled back in time, he was experiencing the most exciting thing in his life and here he was, drinking coffee in an office. But as soon as he took the first sip, a tingling sensation went through all of his body and it felt like he could taste this incredibly delicious coffee with his every cell.

“Right? It’s all in the alignment of stars,” the man in the purple coat said in a mockingly mysterious voice and laughed, climbing onto the kitchen counter. “Oh, here’s Rob. Rob, leave us those nice biscuits, yeah?” he said to Rob the Cartoonist who’s just walked in to pour himself a cup of coffee. A very young Rob, oblivious to the presence of anyone else, froze for a moment and then put down a packet of Bourbon Creams he’s just picked up and left with his mug.

“Why is nobody seeing us? Is it a trick or a device or..?” the Doctor said, slightly confused and curious.

“You could say a trick,” the man said with his mouth full of chocolate biscuits. The Doctor couldn’t help but smile, looking at him being carelessly childish, eating biscuits and dangling his legs. The Doctor always believed that there was no point in being grownup if you can’t be childish sometimes and he was often mocked for it, especially by his work colleagues. They didn’t really see him as one of them, to them he was just an unnecessary flourish, a fashionable quirk to add to their publication.

“It’s a primitive psychic technique,” the man continued, “let’s people see what they want to see. I thought they’ll think I just work here but no. It was easier for them to believe I’m a ghost. But ghosts don’t exist, for them anyway, so they just ignore me. And you by extension.”

The Doctor glanced at the office full of the usual Oxbridge types with maybe just Rob sticking out. It looked like they all were just lost in their work.

“Humans!” the man said with disdain, jumping down to take away the mug from the Doctor’s hands and once again pressing a shiny disc into his palm.

“So,” he said quietly once they were in the lift again, moving a bit too close to the Doctor and eyeing him up with his big brown eyes. “Did you like our little trip?”

The Doctor always felt a bit awkward in this kind of situations. Did he “get the signals” right? After all, the man in the purple coat did stare at the Doctor’s lips for quite some time and now was looking up, waiting with his mouth slightly open. Is this a cue to kiss him? The Doctor hesitated. To hell with it! It’s not often you get a chance to kiss an actual time traveling alien and a pretty one at that. But as soon as the Doctor leaned in for a kiss, the doors opened with a loud ping and a football hit their feet.

“Blasted thing!” the man cried out. A small shiny box quickly appeared in his hands and in a blink of an eye the football has turned into its own miniature copy, no bigger than a cherry. “Go away now if you value your pathetic little lives!” he said impatiently, aiming at two men looking in horror at their shrunk football. The Doctor felt as if he was punched in the gut as the men ran away.

“What’s your actual plan?” the man asked, leaning against the lift’s wall. He was deadly serious, no playfulness about him whatsoever.

“P-plan?” the Doctor stuttered.

“Yes, plan. How do you plan to take over this planet? Maybe I can offer some help in exchange for, well, let’s call it a share.”

“Are you... Are you invading Earth in 1989?!” the Doctor asked, cold at that thought.

“In 1989? Erm...” that question seemed to catch the man off guard, “Possibly. I don’t really remember. I tried a few times before and sometimes I did succeed to an extent and it was fun in the process.”

“‘Fun’? You conquer planets for ‘fun’?” the Doctor could not believe the words he was saying.

“Don’t you? Whatever your reasons, I won’t judge. Wait... It wasn't really you who erased all those records on alien contacts in this area of the city? And you didn’t invent a human persona in order to infiltrate this paper? So you could manipulate the information? Oh God.” The disappointment on the man’s face quickly turned into disgust. “You are actually _one of them_.”

“Yes, I am,” the Doctor said proudly and defiantly.

“Kindly, leave now,” the man said coldly.

The doors closed quietly behind the Doctor’s back and he went back to his office, crushed. He fell into his chair and locked fingers on his stomach, trying to figure out what to do next. Should he go to the editor and just tell everything? There’s an evil alien with a time machine in a lift, he has a little box that shrinks things and possibly people, he plans to invade Earth and they almost kissed. No one’s going to believe this. The Doctor looked up and saw Suzy from Horoscopes behind the next desk, another person here who, unlike others, never rolled her eyes at him.

“Suzy, do you remember you said to me at the last Christmas party that I will meet a tall dark stranger?”

“Yes, of course, sweetheart,” she said gently.

“He’s not really tall,” the Doctor said with a wobble in his voice.

~*~

It was indeed in the alignment of stars. The Doctor, suspecting that everything, surely, must be connected, asked Suzy and she did say that the last time certain planets were in this position was in 1989. Whatever was happening, it was somehow connected to 1989 or maybe events in 1989 were directly causing it. Nothing to do with Mercury going retrograde, of course, despite Suzy’s claims. But whatever was written in stars today, the Doctor was ready. He remembered the floor, _the wrong floor_ , and was waiting at the lift doors, armed with a stapler. He caught a glimpse of his reflection in the silvery doors and felt a little embarrassed: why did he decide that time that he was hearing a couple arguing? Just as he thought of that, the doors slid open with a loud ping and he saw his own confused face again. Before he could say anything, the man in the purple coat grabbed his hand and dragged him away.

“Yes, yes, yes, you were going to warn your past self. Time travel doesn’t really work like this. It’s better not to mess with your own timeline. That’s why I didn’t really talk to you in the shop. I’m not dealing with time paradoxes today, I’m really not in the mood. And I’ve never in my life apologized to anyone or anything twice and we’re talking millennia. So I’m not apologizing to you again. You got your biscuits... Just look at them! The audacity!” the man, who all this time was dragging the Doctor up the stairs, finally stopped both moving and talking and pointed at the window, clearly waiting for the Doctor to be outraged too. Behind the window several large alien ships in the sky were casting an enormous shadow over the city. For the past hour they would appear for a few minutes and then disappear without a trace only to appear in the same place again seconds later.

“I wasn’t upset about football! And you stole those biscuits from our kitchen!” the Doctor said, finally wrestling out his hand. “And what do you mean ‘just look at them’? Aren’t you behind all this?”

“Oh no, no, no. They refused my offer to join forces. They want to do it all by themselves and they just disregarded me. Me! I want revenge. Now. No one invades this planet without my say so. And, well, I thought you’d actually like my help with getting rid of the invaders. Let’s call it a temporary alliance. I’m not promising anything beyond that. See, I’m being honest with you. So, where’s the host? I presume in the office?”

“Ah,” the Doctor said quietly, “about that...”

They flung open the door into the office and ran in. It was the weekend, so, as per usual, only the Doctor and Rob the Cartoonist came in to work for a bit. Rob was now sitting motionless at his desk, a pillar of light coming out of his neck and obscuring his face. As soon as this light appeared, so did the spaceships in the sky over the city. And as soon as the Doctor saw this, he grabbed the stapler and ran to the lift. So he could stop everything. And stop _him_.

“Promise me, nobody dies!” the Doctor said quickly, throwing himself between Rob and the man in the purple coat.

“Or what? You’ll to staple me to death? What are you doing with that thing anyway?” the man asked, taking his shiny little box out of the pocket and nodding at the stapler the Doctor was holding.

“I panicked, okay? And I did catch my finger in it once. And let me tell you, it was very painful,” the Doctor said, putting the stapler down on one of the desks. “I did save you from that badger... thing. So you owe me. Don’t kill anyone. Please.”

The man groaned.

“‘Saved’ is an overstatement. But you did me a favour, alright. Let’s see what I can do.”

The Doctor made sure the man put away his shiny little box and then carefully rolled out Rob in his chair from behind the desk.

“It’s something to do with planets aligning in a particular way in 1989 and now, isn’t it? And with coffee?” the Doctor asked.

“You’re not as stupid as you look,” the man said, leaning in to study Rob more closely. “Magnetic fields from several planets combined threw open a crack in the fabric of spacetime and your world had some guests from a very distant galaxy. And they just thought of expanding their empire, so they saw in this a perfect opportunity. That little crack was not that big at the start, so just a little bit of their world seeped into this one. But it was enough to infect the coffeemaker in 1989 and it turned out that the coffee was a perfect nutritious solution and breeding ground for their larvae.”

“For their what?! Oh my God, I’ve drunk alien babies! Wait, are they going to hatch?” the Doctor blurted out and wiggled a little bit as if in hope to get rid of little aliens inside him.

The man couldn’t help but laugh, looking at the Doctor’s silly little dance.

“Don’t be stupid, you’ve metabolized them a long time ago, you weren’t exposed to that much,” the man said, when he finally stopped laughing.

“And why didn’t Rob metabolize them? And why nobody else in the office got infected?”

“He drank that coffee every day for twenty years. It built up. And, as you said, now it’s undrinkable, no-one drank it, except him. The growing size of the colony has started to affect the taste not like it used to. But I’m sure they’re also producing some kind of addictive. So Rob just couldn’t stop drinking that coffee, even if it is incredibly sour,” the man explained.

“Didn’t, didn’t you drink a bit more than me? I know you’ve visited our office kitchen more than once. Are you... Are you infected too?” the Doctor asked cautiously.

“Well, I was. How do you think I’ve contacted them?” the man sighed and turned to the Doctor. “Is that really that necessary to keep him alive? He’s hosting an enormous colony that transmits a signal for the ships. He’s basically a locating beacon, guiding them through that crack now it’s opened up again. I’m not sure if he’s even still there. I say, cut the signal and they’ll be gone in seconds.”

“But...” the Doctor felt the ground crumble under his feet, “That signal, it must be on the blink. Those ships, they’re still not really here. They keep disappearing. Could it be him fighting it? I’m not loosing my friend. Please, think of something. Come on, he did leave you nice biscuits. How you got rid of them yourself?”

“Well, I expelled them. But it wouldn’t work with human anatomy. If only we could re-host them to me... I could always try eating him but you’re so keen on keeping him alive...”

“Eating?! I really hope you’re joking. Can you, I don’t know, hypnotize them into leaving him?” the Doctor asked desperately.

“Ooh,” the man seemed excited at the Doctor’s suggestion, “hypnotize millions of live creatures into submission? I like that thought. Although, I must say, at this stage they’re not that sentient. This might be not that easy. I hope those four cups of coffee I drank today will seem alluring enough to them.” He sighed loudly. “I’m having a really long day,” he sighed again and turned back to stare intensely at Rob.

“Is this working? Is this working?” the Doctor wasn’t sure if anything was happening because the man in the purple coat just stopped moving completely. Then the light coming out of Rob just gradually faded and left Rob sitting in his chair unconscious but alive.

“Sneeze! Need to SNEEZE!” the man exhaled sharply, squeezing the Doctor’s hand. “Too many of them. They’re fighting to stay. Can’t sneeze. Need to sneeze!”

The Doctor jumped up a little as he was always did when trying to figure out quick what to do. He clicked his fingers when the solution dawned on him.

“Hairspray! Do you still have that can of hairspray in your pocket?”

The man nodded and, squirming, pulled out a can of hairspray from his coat pocket. He gave it to the Doctor, gesturing to use it fast. The Doctor shook the can and sprayed almost all of its contents into the man’s face. But just as the man was about to sneeze, the Doctor cried out, “Stop! You can’t sneeze them out yet! They’re just going to re-colonize this place if we just leave them here, don’t they? Hold it in, hold it in!”

The man grunted really loudly. He sneezed into the paper cup, put in place by the Doctor just in time. A little sparkly cloud came out of his nose and settled on the surface of milky liquid.

“Oh. What a shame. I love caramel cappuccinos,” he said looking into the cup and then at the Doctor putting the plastic lid on tightly.

“Sorry, I nodded off,” Rob said sleepily, waking up in his chair. “Did I miss anything?”

The Doctor glanced at the window. No sign of spaceships or alien invasion. He patted Rob on the back gently, happy to see his friend again, “Not really.”

“Your ghost is here,” Rob whispered out of the corner of his mouth, nodding at the man in the purple coat.

“Yes, I know, Rob. Have a little rest,” the Doctor said, rolling him in his chair back behind the desk. “And I’ll go help our ghost with an unfinished business.”

“We need to put them in a safe place, don’t we?” the Doctor said, once he and the man walked out the office.

“Oh yes. Especially since you’ve put them into their favourite nutritional liquid. They’re going to breed really fast. Not the best idea, putting them there.”

“I had to improvise! So, what are we going to do next? You won’t just leave them to colonize and conquer this planet without you, won’t you?”

“Well,” the man scratched his stubble, “I sneezed mine out into the black hole. I’ve generated it accidentally while trying to work out the recipe for the syrup they use for gingerbread lattes. We can just put them there. It’s still in my TARDIS.”

The doors of the lift slid open and the man stepped inside. The Doctor hesitated, clasping the paper cup to his chest.

“You’re not going to abduct me, are you?” he said with suspicion.

“Oh, please!” the man rolled his eyes and shook his head. “That’s why I don’t usually help people. You always assume things!”

While the Doctor was still hesitating, the doors of a nearby IT department flung open and all the employees rushed into the lift, pushing the Doctor inside and together, face to face, with the man in the purple coat. They all clearly had no idea that just minutes before Earth was almost invaded by aliens, consumed by their work and now by their phones. The doors closed and the lift started moving.

“Are you pleased to see me or is it a gun in your pocket?” the Doctor joked quietly and giggled nervously.

“Both,” the man said with a deadpan face, looking up and staring into the Doctor’s eyes.

While the blushing Doctor was trying to come up with an answer, the doors opened with a loud ping. A lone person was standing in the hallway, wearing a surgical mask, absolutely terrified at the look of a packed lift. People rushed out and the doors quickly closed again with the Doctor just about catching a glimpse of a poster saying something about washing hands.

“What was that all about?” he asked.

“There’s a global pandemic in 2020. Everyone will go into lockdown, travel will be restricted. They’re going to come up with a perfume smelling like airplane chassis and hot asphalt. It’s hilarious,” the man said and pulled the Doctor’s sleeve a little, making him turn away from the doors. “Come on, let’s put away your invaders.”

The lift wasn’t there anymore. Now they both were in a dim lit hut, with rugs and cushions scattered all over the place.

“Don’t trip over the library,” the man said, nodding to a pile of books, old magazines and files with “top secret” stamped on them in the corner behind the sofa. The room seemed absolutely normal, albeit slightly cluttered, except right in the middle there was some kind of a console lit with a red light. The man was now pressing some buttons and pulling levers standing behind it. The Doctor glanced over his shoulder: the lift doors were still there, right in the middle of a wooden wall.

“Yes, bigger on the inside and the lift bit is just chameleon circuit playing up. I keep meaning to fix it. You didn’t really believe I was traveling through time in a lift?” the man said, lifting his eyebrows in a bit of a sneer.

“It looks a little bit... modest for a man who wants to conquer planets and stars,” the Doctor said, when he finally remembered how to breathe and walked up to the console.

“I like it. It’s cozy,” the man sounded almost wounded.

He got out a small glass jar from under the console. Inside it between two lenses of a broken pair of specs held up by colourful plasters in opposite sides of the jar resided a miniature black hole.

“So, I open the lid here and you just lift a little the lid from the cup,” the man said. “One, two... three!”

A small sparkly cloud left the cup as they did exactly this and it was immediately sucked into the jar. The man quickly closed the lid and he and the Doctor both laughed with relief. The awkward silence followed.

“I didn’t do it,” the man answered the Doctor’s silent question. “Humanity often brings disasters on itself all by itself, my dear Doctor. No masterminds or Mercury retrograding, just humans being humans.”

“Can you, please, put those people back in 2011?” the Doctor asked really quietly.

The man in the purple coat groaned.

“Okay, okay, I’ll pick them up. Don’t know why I keep agreeing to do things you ask. Maybe I should...” the man eyed up the Doctor slowly, “... run some tests?”

The Doctor blushed, somehow knowing exactly what he meant.

“I’m not really into that. I’m more...” the Doctor leaned over the console and kissed firmly the man in the purple coat on the lips.

Then suddenly a sound of something landing followed and the doors behind them slid open with a loud ping.

“You’re going to love this,” the man grinned with the Doctor still kissing him.

The Doctor turned around to the open doors and ran out almost immediately as soon as he saw what was behind them.

“You know, actually, I don’t mind being abducted for a bit,” he said, looking up to four glowing moons in the purple sky.

“I didn’t even doubt it,” the man in the purple coat said with the biggest grin on his face, stepping out of the TARDIS onto the pink grass. “I’m the Master, by the way. And did I mention that it also travels in space?”


End file.
